DR. TAMARA ROGERSA snapshot of the interior of a star three times as heavy as the Sun which shows waves generated by turbulent core convection.

It’s one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics, but now scientists believe they may have explained why supermassive stars live fast and die young.

These stars, also known as blue supergiants, have relatively short lifespans before they explode into supernovae, making them difficult to study, Mirror reported.

However, researchers from Newcastle University in the UK have now been able to observe the waves that ripple through these stars for the first time.

These observations have allowed the team to create simulations of the stars, and determine what it is that gives their surface its appearance.

Modelling the interior of stars, the team predicted that gravity waves, like those we see in the ocean, could break at the surface of stars.

They also predicted the emergence of a second type of wave, similar to the seismic waves on Earth, which are generated from deep within the star.

Now, using data collected by the NASA space telescope, an international team of experts led by KU Leuven in Belgium have discovered that almost all of these elusive blue giants do in fact shimmer and ripple in brightness due to the presence of waves on the surface.

As predicted, the waves originate in the stars' deep interior and provide prospects for studying the supergiants using asteroseismology, similar to the study of earthquakes on Earth.

Publishing their findings in Nature Astronomy, the authors said that from observations of these waves, they can study properties of the stars that would be unobtainable from other astronomical techniques.